Terry has designed broadcast stations, recording studios, broadcast equipment, intelligent machines and special computer languages for IBM, and has worked as a broadcast journalist covering elections, fires, riots and Woodstock.
He has taught electronics

makes me think that the only Micro advantage is the ability to act as a USB Human Input Device. If you want that, it makes sense. But well-done Nano compatibles cost a little less than the Micro.

The USB onboard the Micro (and the UNO) is both an advantage and a liability. I've seen several UNOs that have lost their USB firmware and the end users do not have the ability or know-how to reload the USB interface. I've only seen one FTDI chip go bad in over 3000 328 based boards.

Essentially the Micro is a physically small Leonardo and the Nano is a physically small Duemilanoave.

But I think it's good thinking and good design work, and if some really cool projects use it and make it's design choices work well, it's a winner.

The Micro is clearly a small, breadboardable Leonardo. But it is more expensive and while it does break out the SPI pins (both the data/clock lines only wired to the ISP on the Leo and the SS pin which is not broken out on the Leo at all), it is still slightly gimped compared to Adafruits non-Arduino 32U4 dev board, which also features the RXLED and HWB pins broken out. While one might be able to jumper some wires to the two NC pins, I do not think the Arduino label makes the extra price and effort for a full-featured 32U4 dev board worthwhile. Only good for those who cannot bootload it themselves, I guess.

Yes the price of the official boards (not one for one against a specific clone but in general against "like" boards) has been disappointing. I would hope that buying the original is not like buying a Cadillac board as Makers are a pretty frugal bunch so prices should be guaged very close to market plus a dollar, maybe two max.

The difference on official shields vs. others is even more stark. This is where Arduino could pump some serious innovation to leapfrog the available hardware and software but it really hasn't happened. Lately more evolutionary than revolutionary,

USB onboard the Micro (and the UNO) is both an advantage and a liability. I've seen several UNOs that have lost their USB firmware and the end users do not have the ability or know-how to reload the USB interface. I've only seen one FTDI chip go bad in over 3000 328 based boards.

Likewise, and with the USB onboard you lose about 2k of flash memory as well.

I've just finished the layout of a board that started with the mega32u4 (as used on the Leonardo), then I got to thinking about how reliable I've found FTDI chips to be in the past and how little I know about USB coding so I swapped to a mega1284 and an FT232.

Because I needed an IO expander with the 32u4 and don't with the 1284 the end result is the same in terms of PCB real estate and I get simpler IO, over 4x the program flash and 8x the RAM. Cost wise it will be about $1.50 more but that's worth it for the extra memory I think.

On the 1284 you "lose" two of the three interrupts to serial ports which 99% of the time is where you don't want them. On the 32u4 I think you lose them all to serial pins.

The problem I have with that is if you are using those pins for serial you can't use them for unrelated interrupts. If the int pins were elsewhere you could always connect them to a serial pin if you needed that function, but the reverse is not true.

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IC that takes HIGH in and outputs GND

I thought they would be great because of the lower pin count, after all you only use about 3 pins on a FT232, but last time I looked the new ones were more expensive.

It's like a 16-pin with 20-pin body! Caught that mistake in prototype before sending for production batch.I'm not sure why you are not buying from E-14 Aussie? Free shipping but I guess out of stock at least until end of month.

What's this note: "Arduino Micro in available in preview until December 1, 2012 at the following distributors..." on the Micro's buy page?

Does it mean it will not be available anymore, and for an undetermined time after 1th of December?I'm asking because we're about to kick-start a project that would likely be based on the Micro, but we cannot wait for months for its availability when we're done and ready for production...